Android's SoundPool.play is broken on the Xperia PLAY

Thu Aug 11 2011 11:33:48 GMT+0100 (British Summer Time)

Whenever you try to play a sound with a rate other than 1.0f, the sound will simply not play at all on the Xperia "PLAY". You get nothing. Not even the sound at the original 1.0 rate. Silence. Void. Vacuum. Zeroes.

What an ironic, unfortunate coincidence--maybe we should retitle the phone as Xperia NOT PLAY.

And the worst is... I don't even know where to report it! I can't find any Sony Ericsson bug tracker, and since I've tested this on other several phones and even the Galaxy Tab, and it works on them, I'm pretty sure it's only the PLAY that decided to act silly.

But having in mind this was a developer phone, and probably it had many rough edges still to be polished, I thought: maybe there's a software update and this is old news already? Yes, some sources said so, it was exactly released on the 2nd of August. Excellent!
So I have gone to Settings -- About phone -- Software update -- Update now. First it complained with a "Could not connect to network" error. Some forum searches after, I've found some people suggested taking out the SD and SIM cards. There wasn't a SIM card in place anyway, so I've taken out the SD card too.

Repeated the process... and again "Could not connect to network". Gah!

But then I remembered that this update was meant to be rolled first to European customers. Aha! Maybe that's why it complains about not being able to connect to a network--it wants the GSM network to find out where I am! So maybe it's not a problem of Wi-Fi connectivity?

Third attempt: I've re-inserted the mini SD card, and placed a SIM card too on the phone. Turns out I was right: the phone did find the network it was looking for, also found where I am, and then it checked for updates.

Unfortunately, it also decided that my phone is already using "the latest version". Err... no, 2.3.2 is definitely not the latest version. Oh well, maybe it is according to Sony's security standards.

But despair not! For there's still another way to update, using Update service, which is... a Windows-only program!?

No, I don't think I'm going to install that. We're past the age of installing software in our computers in order to update our phones, right? RIGHT?

Update: I've filed a bug in Android's bug tracker. Although I have the feeling it will be useless, but at least it will be documented... and you can even star it! Oooh!